Ride. Write.

PREAMBLE Did you know there’s a textbook all about the Dirty Kanza? It’s called The Anatomy of the Human Body. I know this because on I read it cover-to-cover for 206 miles on June 2, 2018. There’s an entire section devoted to what the DK does to your body, with each transparent page depicting the internal workings of a human being, layer by colorful layer. Throughout, you are reduced to nothing more than a 7th-grade science experiment, with each corpuscle held up to the light to create a sun shard blood bath. Look. These are your depleted cells. See ’em? …

Statement for the Record Senate Select Committee on Poor Choices Janeen J. McCrae June 15, 2017 Chairperson(s) Mohn, Chairman Cummins, Chairman Denis, Citizens of Emporia Thank you for inviting me to appear here before you today. I was asked to testify today by several esteemed members of the citizenry, (namely, a few random people on Twitter), to describe for you my interactions with the Flint Hills and the event known as the “Dirty Kanza 200”, or as it is sometimes known, the “Let’s Get Sweaty and Hurl Rocks at Each Other” event, aka the “Race You to the Bottom of …

The storm before the calm A crack, a flash, the room strobes with light and something outside thumps. I sit up on the foldout bed and see the shadow of Taco do the same on his throne of an air mattress. What the…? Is that…? There’s the unmistakable sound of fat-bellied rain being hurled against a glass sliding door by a howler of a wind. Another flash and Taco’s features are caught in the lightning’s glow. From my bed, I pull the curtain back and peer outside to see a tree frantically waving its pom-pommed arms at me. Gimmee an …

This is for you. And so the mud caked you and raked you, it stuck and it clung. It formed five-pound pie plates under each foot, and you squelched and stomped, left right, left right. It weighed you down worse than a mortgage, heavier than Thor’s hammer. A carefully constructed and grotesque glue prank—set by an antagonistic and oddball god—it rode up your heels like ants ascending a sugarcoated tree. This mud, this muck, this god-forsaken goo—it set its mind to crest the cuff of your shoe and infect your carefully chosen socks with pure Kansas gunk. You slogged and …

We don’t have time for this! No time. Tick tock. I’m not starved for attention, nor do I yearn for affection or the ear of a long-suffering confidant. But if I’ve absorbed anything from American summer camp movies it’s that you need a camp buddy if you’re gonna survive the short-sheeting and underpant wedgies. It should come as no surprise to anyone that I sought one out for Dirty Kanza training camp. It may come as some surprise, however, to discover that in order to find my camp buddy, I had to look no further than my own leg. That …

The Tour de Tree. Five Days, 10 stages, mucho hurt. There is only one rule: All riders must complete a loop of the Mother Tree during a stage or risk disqualification. The following is an account of the thrid edition of this tour. Photos here